Ilan Shor party

The new governor of the pro-Russian autonomous region of Gagauzia, Evghenia Gutul, publicly thanked her supporters on Tuesday after the Court of Appeal in the region's main city Comrat decided the previous evening to validate the results of the May 14 elections for the position of bashkan (governor).

Officers of Moldova's National Anticorruption Centre, CNA, on Tuesday evening raided the offices of the Central Electoral Commission in Gagauzia, collecting lists of voters for the election of a new governor held in the autonomous southern region.

The CNA said it found names in the lists of some citizens settled outside the country and of some dead people.

Local elections in Moldova's pro-Russian autonomous region of Gagauzia were won on Sunday by the Ilan Shor Party's candidate, Evghenia Gutul, according to results published by the Electoral Commission in Comrat, the central administrative city in the region.

Moldovan anti-corruption prosecutors on Sunday raided the offices of the pro-Russian Ilan Shor Party in the southern autonomous region of Gagauzia, suspecting they have used illegal means to solicit votes for the party's candidate, Evghenia Gutul, in elections for the post of governor.

Moldova's autonomous region of Gagauzia goes to elections on Sunday for a new governor, or Bashkan, with eight candidates in the race, most of them with pro-Russian views.

The elections in Gagauzia represent a first test before local elections throughout the country due in autumn, and for presidential elections that will take place next year.

The Central Electoral Commission in Moldova, CEC, has sanctioned the Ilan Shor Party, depriving it of the right to receive allocations from the state budget for the first six months of this year.

Pro-European parties gained a convincing victory in the elections in Moldova on Sunday after 99.60 per cent of the ballots cast were counted.

According to these results, the pro-European Action and Solidarity Party, PAS, led until recently by President Maia Sandu, came first by a landslide, taking 52.60 per cent of the votes and 63 seats of the 101 seats, a comfortable majority.

Anti-graft prosecutors in Moldova on Wednesday interrogated Vladimir Novosadiuc, director of Sputnik Moldova, a news agency affiliated to the Kremlin, over a notorious money-laundering scheme.

More than two months since the parliamentary elections were held in Moldova on February 24, negotiations on forming a coalition government in the former Soviet republic remain ongoing.

So far, the three main political forces that entered the legislature, the Democrats, Socialists and ACUM, have not found find a consensus.